A well-known French far-Right historian committed suicide in Notre Dame
Cathedral by shooting himself in the mouth in front of its main altar on
Tuesday, in an apparent protest against gay marriage.

Dominique Venner, 78, a former extreme-Right activist known in France for his political essays, posted a note on his blog dated May 21 slamming a law passed by the Socialist government last week allowing same-sex marriage and adoption, which he called “vile”.

Police also found a handwritten note by his body, whose contents are not yet known.

Mr Venner calmly walked to the alter in the choir area and shot himself in the mouth with a Belgian-made Herstal automatic pistol, according to Europe 1 radio.

Tourists said the cathedral was full when the gun was fired but that there was no panic during the police evacuation.

In his blog post, he appeared to link his act to France’s “Marriage for All” law, which was fully passed into law last week after the country’s highest constitutional court waived any objections.

Alluding to an forthcoming demonstration by anti-gay marriage activists on Sunday, Mr Venner said: “Demonstrators on 26 May will now have reasons to shout their impatience and anger. A vile law, which once voted, can still be reversed.”

Apparently calling for others to follow his high-profile act, he wrote: “It will certainly require new, spectacular and symbolic gestures to smash the drowsiness, to shake the anaesthetised consciences and to awaken the memory of our origins. We are entering a time when words must be authenticated by actions.”

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-Right National Front party, FN, said she offered “all our respect to Dominique Venner whose last, eminently political act was to try to awaken the people of France”.

She later tweeted: “It is nevertheless in life and hope that France will rise up and save itself.”

Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, likened his death to the suicide of collaborationist author Pierre Drieu La Rochelle in 1945. “An intellectual’s suicide, testifying through death,” wrote the founder of the FN.

The gay marriage law sparked huge demonstrations in recent months and angry debates in parliament, with the mainstream Right aligning itself with the Catholic church to oppose the law. A significant minority of protesters were from the far-Right.

Elements of the Right want the law to be amended while other hardliners have even pledged to reverse it if elected.

Mr Venner was a former activist with the OAS, or “Organisation of the Secret Army” a far-Right French paramilitary group behind a wave of bombings and assassinations to prevent Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule. In 1962, an OAS militant made a failed assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle.

He was also a weapons expert, having written an 11-volume encyclopedia on arms, and was editor of the magazine la Nouvelle Revue Historique.

Patrick Jacquin, Notre Dame’s rector, said: “This is the first time that a suicide has taken place inside the Cathedral.”

It is highly rare for the 850-year old cathedral to be closed to the public. The landmark on Paris’ île de la cite, immortalised by Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, is visited by 13 million people from around the world each year.

All masses were cancelled, with a special “vigil for life” with all bishops from the Paris area held on Tuesday night. “We will pray for this man as for so many others who are at the end of their tether,” said Mr Jacquin.

Mr Vanner’s editor, Pierre-Guillaume de Roux said: “I don’t think we can link this suicide to this marriage affair. It goes well beyond that.”

He said Mr Vanner, whose book “A Samurai of the West, a Breviary of the Undefeated” is due out in June, may have been inspired by Yukio Mishima, the celebrated far-Right Japanese author who committed suicide in 1970.